Penny Winters was a 63-year-old maintenance worker at the Portage, Indiana, Walmart store. The surveillance cameras caught Ms. Winters eating Oreos that she had not paid for during her evening shift at the store. When asked why she did it, Ms. Winters explained that she did not have the money to buy the cookies. She earned $11.40 per hour (the usual Walmart pay is $8.87 per hour), but her son had been in a motorcycle accident and was unable to work, thus making her the sole wage earner in her home. 

Ms. Winters also confessed that she had been taking Oreos, gum, deli sandwiches,chocolate, and potato chips for more than eight years, with four of the years being at a Walmart in Tucson, Arizona, where Ms. Winters originally lived.7 

She confessed to taking one to two items per week during her shift. She indicated that she began eatingOreos that were open and near cash registers because she assumed that they could not be sold and would just be thrown away. However, when the opened packages were not available, she would simply remove the food from the shelves and then take it into the break room where she would eat it. The result was, because junk food costs add up over eight years, that Ms. Winters was charged with felony theft. She has come to be known as the “Oreo Grandma.”